GOP VA House member drops opposition to gay judge

I had no idea this story was about Tracy Thorne (now Tracy Thorne-Begland) when we wrote about it a few months ago. Tracy was one of “the” DADT heroes back in 1992-93 (and possibly the most famous of that era). As we wrote before, the Virginia Republican party was blocking Tracy’s appointment as a judge, simply because he’s gay.

A Virginia-based religious right anti-gay group objected to Tracy’s nomination, days before he was to be confirmed, on the basis of Tracy having been discharged from the military for being gay. They literally tried to use his discharge against him, and the Virginia GOP dutifully bought the argument.

Now, a key Virginia House of Delegates member has dropped his opposition to Tracy’s appointment (he says he had concerns about Tracy allegedly having appeared in uniform on Nightline when he came out – in fact, Tracy did not appear in uniform).

Whatever the real reason, it’s good that this delegate has changed his mind, though it’s not clear if the rest of the VA GOP – it’s a notoriously anti-gay state (and racist too – remember who was the defendant in Loving v VA, the anniversary of which was two days ago, not to mention “macaca”) – will join the 21st century as well.

John AravosisFollow me on Twitter: @aravosis | @americablog | @americabloggay | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ | LinkedIn. John Aravosis is the Executive Editor of AMERICAblog, which he founded in 2004. He has a joint law degree (JD) and masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown; and has worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and as a stringer for the Economist. He is a frequent TV pundit, having appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline, AM Joy & Reliable Sources, among others. John lives in Washington, DC. John's article archive.